Andrew Wood, a media co-ordinator for the Campaign Against Arms
Trade (CAAT), claimed that the taking and storage of police photos
was a violation of his privacy, but because they were taken in the
public street and retained only for a specific purpose, the High
Court rejected the claims.
Wood attended the London annual general meeting (AGM) of Reed
Elsevier, part of which is Spearhead Exhibitions, a company that
holds arms trade fairs. Though he asked one question described by
the court as "unobjectionable", he was photographed by a police
photographer outside the hotel where the AGM was held.
He refused to identify himself and was followed to an
underground station where police attempted to learn his identity
from his travel documents with the help of London Underground
staff.
Article eight of the European Convention on Human Rights
safeguards the right to a private and family life, and Wood claimed
that this was infringed by the taking and retention of the
photos.
The police argued that there was no permanent file being kept on
Wood, and that the photographs would be stored and used only by
public order officers in order to prevent offences at future
events.
Mr Justice McCombe of the High Court said that the case was
complicated by the involvement of the state, rather than the more
common privacy invader, the media.
"It is perhaps intrusion by the state with which the draftsmen
of the Convention would have been particularly concerned in 1949
and I felt throughout the case the importance that the courts
should attach to vigilance in this area, while recognising the
difficulties of police forces in democratic societies in protecting
us all from criminal behaviour," he said in his ruling.
The Court examined high profile cases of alleged privacy
invasion, the case of Princess Caroline of Monaco in which the
press were found to have intruded on her privacy in a series of
photos of her undertaking mundane daily activities.
It also looked at the case of Naomi Campbell against the Mirror
group of newspapers, in which it was found that the publishing of a
photograph of the model leaving narcotics anonymous was an invasion
of her privacy, though the actual taking of the photographs was
not.
"It seems clear from these cases that the mere taking of a
person's photograph in a public street may not generally interfere
with that person's right of privacy under Article 8," said the
ruling. "More is usually required before that threshold is crossed,
for example if there is the type of encyclopaedic press recording
and subsequent publication of photographs of the comings and goings
of a person, as there was of Princess Caroline in the Von Hannover
case, or the taking and publication of photographs tending to
expose medical confidences to the public gaze, as in the Campbell
case."
The judge ruled that the taking of the photos did not infringe
Woods' rights, and that the retention of the photos could not be
considered an interference if DNA samples, a much more personal
record of identity than a photograph, could be lawfully
retained.
Mr Justice McCombe pointed out that Woods was attending a public
AGM in an official protesting capacity as media co-ordinator of the
protest group, and that the company was one which had been the
victim of protesters' criminal activity in the past.
"[Woods] was photographed in a public street, in circumstances
in which police presence could not have been unexpected by [Woods]
or by anyone else," he ruled. "The images were to be retained,
without general disclosure, for very limited purposes. The
retention of the images was not part of the compilation of a
general dossier of information concerning [Woods] of the type that
has been held in the past to constitute an interference with
Article 8 rights."
